Start with lower temperatures and work your way up. A good place to start is 675-700FI have ruined more good pizzas with too high temperatures. You can always bake thepie longer, but you cannot “UNBAKE” a pie.

The air temperature can be 200F higher than the stone, so keep that in mind when shooting for a temperature target. A stone temperature of 700F is most likely yielding you an air temperature of 900F.

The “perfect bake” comes right before the “over bake”. When you are baking in the 700-800 range this can be a matter of 5-10 seconds. The whole process becomes less forgiving, and cannot be timed. Subtle variations in the dough consistency and thickness, along with the toppings and topping thicknesses can change everything. Add to that the different melting characteristics of cheese, whether it is diced, sliced or shredded. Weather it is on top or covered, in the end it all leads to a very “volatile mix” that you have to contend with. This is why there is only one way to achieve great results……practice, practice, practice

more to come,

by the way,we just did a run with the Pizza Pro at a commercial establishmentthe other day. We baked non stop for 2 hrs. and produced 36 pies.(a little over 3 min per pie, with actual bake times at aprox. 2 min.)

This is a direct response to those of you who haveasked me if we can have some more space betweenthe stones and possibly do hearth baked bread also.

Today I decided to take a stab at it. In fact it only requires2 modifications on the "Pizza Pro" to get aprox. 6" of spacebetween the stones. Loading and baking visibility are greatly improved,but it remains to be seen how well it does on high temp pizza baking.

The bake turned out to be absolutely phenomenal. I was able to let the bread rise on a screen which made it easy to insertthe bread into the oven. The hearth temperature was 550, so I'mguessing the air to be around 700. I was able to mist the breadwith a spray bottle at regular intervals during the 18 min bake.

The bread had absolutely incredible oven spring, and shot right upto within a 1/2" of the top stone. The crust tasted very wood fired,and had a nice crispness to it, overall a very different bake thanin the home oven. I was surprised.

This is really exciting since the pizza pro can be used to create hearthbaked artisan breads (with steam) along with high temp pizza.

The bake turned out to be absolutely phenomenal. I was able to let the bread rise on a screen which made it easy to insertthe bread into the oven. The hearth temperature was 550, so I'mguessing the air to be around 700. I was able to mist the breadwith a spray bottle at regular intervals during the 18 min bake.

I haven't done it on a prolonged basis,but both stones had no problem. I was surprised myself, since I really soaked thecrust several times. This obviously extends the baking time and allows the bread to bebaked at a much higher temperature.(wonder if you could do the same with pizza edges?)

I am looking into it for the pizza pro. It requires an adjustable oven, since bread requires more than twice the hight as pizza.

"Fundamental tips & tricks" cont.

10. 2stone tips & tricks. cont.

The biggest challenge with the 2stone is loading the pie in the center of the stone successfully.If you are hesitant to begin with, use a screen. If the screen is new, season it with olive oil in your home oven at 300-400 F two or three times before using it. You can also spray a light mist on it and dust it with flour. When using a screen you will need to raise the stone temperature by 50-100 F. If for some reason your oven has gotten too hot, the screen will also effectively reversely lower the stone temperature.

If your stone is too hot and the bottom of the pizza is done before the top, slide the aluminum peel under the pizza and raise it slightly. This will finish off the top nicely while halting the the bottom bake.Similarly if your pizza has baked nicely on the top and the bottom needs more time, shut the oven down and let the bottom finish from the heat stored in the stone. By letting the bottom dry out on a rack for 30 sec. before you put the pizza back on the hot stone, you can also stiffen up the bottom crust if thats what you want.

The best tool for tending the pizza and unloading it is a long handled 8" long spatula. The aluminum peel is to big to effectively move the pie around if you by chance got it loaded off center. The spatula also doubles nicely for rotating the stone. They are available at your local restaurant supply house or on line.(get the one with the extended handle, since the short one is a little too hot to handle.)

Learning to properly handle the pie on the wooden peel is by far one of the most important elements in running the 2stone. As mentioned before, use two peels if you can, and practice between the two. As you venture into loading larger and larger pizzas on the stone, the room for error will diminish, and the need for these skills will increase.

I was just thinking... imagine if you had the original 2Stone oven, ... you know the 4 corners that the top iswelded to.... ?

Imagine if that was adjustable, - imagine the 4 corners having 4 pieces of steel that have holes in them, and the upperpart of the oven ( the top ) had little "steel pegs" ... now imagine this, - if you want to do pizza, you just move the topof the oven down a few pegs, and it snaps into the holes.....

Want to bake bread ? ... just lift the top up, and it pops into the upper holes. In fact, the 4 corners could have maybe 3 holesso that it would be considered "fully adjustable "

My description may not be great, but I am seeing in my head that strapping you use to hold up pipes ( with holes ) but of course in the 2Stone this would be the heavy metal you use that would used.

Think of the lawn mowers, - years ago, you had to remove the wheel, by removing the nut and bolt, and then you'd move the wheel from one place to an upper hole and then put the bolt back in ( that's the system I'm thinking about ) ( of course today, this doesn't exist, and you just push a little lever and that is how the lawn mower wheel is adjusted ) but I'm thinking of the old way of doing it.

Updated idea: After drawing my diagram just now, I realize this first idea is not that great. What I would do, is create 3 simplelengths of sides "supports" or "struts"

3 lengths.- Short - : Pizza- Medium - Flatbreads ( ? )- Long - Bread

Both the bottom and top of the 2Stone would have welded pegs. 4 pegs on the bottom ( base ) of the unit, 4 pegs at the top.If I wish to make bread, I simply take the 4 "long" struts or whatever you call them, and simply attach the 4 of them onto the 2Stone.

Bingo, - it's done, and ready to go.

I want pizza ? ... quickly take the 4 "long" struts off, and replace with the 4 "short" struts.

This would take mere seconds to accomplish. The pegs would have heads on them, to ensure the unit doesn't fall apart.

Doing it this way, would mean that no other holes are needed on those struts. Just one on each end ( to attach to the base ) and one hole at the top to attach the top.

The benefits to baking pizza in the 2stone are huge, since it is not possible to get the home oven up to those temps, and doing it between 2 stones 3" apart with enormous amounts of convection heat are also huge.

My question is are most people generally happy with their home baked bread (baked in a standard oven) and are there really that many people seeking alternative baking methods. In the survey it looks like about half of the pizza bakers also bake bread half of the time. It is of coarse easier to to justify the cost if you can do more than pizza. I have a prototype now that I am testing with an adjustment from 3" to 6" and it work very well. The oven spring is enormous at around 700F but you have to keep misting the bread or you'll have burnt offerings within minutes. Then the question is what is the ideal bake temperature? If it is 475-500 you are sort of back into the home oven territory. I don't know....... you are a baker, do you really feel that you could step up the quality of your home oven or are you more or less satisfied. (I guess that becomes the dominant question.)

willard

Oh I didn't see your picture at first, nice picture..... you are a pretty good sketcherI must say. Yes I have a variation on that theme in my prototype where I have two side railsmounted higher to raise the top.

Truthfully, I think that if I were to bake in bread in the 2Stone, it would be *for me* more of a gadgetand more of something to impress friends who happened to be over while it was baking, and having themsay "oh that's cool"

In reality, bakers do not bake their bread at 700 degrees, and one of the reasons is that the texture and inner bread formation needs a more delicate temperature to correctly bake. Some things just don't need to bebaked for 4 minutes. Faster is not alway better. ( look at the CD / DVD industry, for a long time people were all hungup on how fast they could burn a CD, and now people realize that the slower you burn, the better quality your CD or DVD actually is.)

Different breads bake differently, and no doubt it's nice to have a loaf of bread from a bakery that uses a wood fired oven, however the ovensare not kept at 700 degrees.

I guess everyone is different, and everyone will use their oven for a different purpose, so it's really up in the air.

Edit: and yes, if my oven were adjustable, I'd probabally try to bake some bread in it from time to time just because it wouldbe fun. However, I see your point, - is it really worth the extra effort and design change, if not that many people are going to buy it.There's something good to be said about the current 2Stone. It's a pure pizza oven, and it does an amazing job, because that is what it was designed to do ... Pizza !

« Last Edit: April 29, 2008, 11:17:10 AM by canadianbacon »

Logged

Pizzamaker, Rib Smoker, HomeBrewer, there's not enough time for a real job.

I'm just playing the devil's advocate Mark,as you say the normal temperature is lowerfor bread which also means the bake time is longernow unless the quality of the bread is hugely differentI'm just wondering. The 2stone bakes flat breads like pizza, pita, naan, etc. incredibly well because of the low domeand the high heat, something you cannot get in the home oven or on the grill.

willard

I was hoping that a 6" dome would work for pizza as well, but in testsit did not turn out well at all, so the close proximity of the stones is a must.

Willard What about a lever to raise and lower the upper stone? Raise stone and easily load pizza. Lower stone and bake top to perfection. Raise stone and remove pizza. Also the adjustable top stone may allow you to control baking pattern to get bottom and top to cook evenly.

That's an idea Kasmir..... I think Mark makes a point... even if you can do it is there really that manypeople who are dying to make bread that way. (other than a novelty) The 2stone is built for highheat and as Mark (who has worked as a baker) points out that is not the heat you need for bread.We do have a sliding burner on the Pizza Pro which facilitates the adjustable feature.

I have made 6 loves of bread now in the 2stone and have to admit making pizza is a hell of a lot more exciting! To get a good bake I think you have to go at least 30 min with lower temps. with bread. So that more or less puts it in another category. It also makes more sense in a wood fired oven where you can load up 5-10 loaves at a time. Hard to say.....I think the verdict is still out there on this one.

willard

Kasmir, Your idea is interesting....... I would be hesitant to do anything that could potentially raise the price, unless there were significant advantages. Loading the pie is easy once you have learned the techniques. I don't believe unloading it has ever been an issue, at least I've never heard of it.

Here is a version of Jerry's one day recipe done in the 2stoneI also posted it on Jerry's thread. I can highly recomend this for a one day bake. The flavor and the texture of the crust really surprised me.

We also tried something for a super fast bake that lends itself well to the 2stone.This Tostada only took 30 sec. to do and came out as good as any I have ever had.If you want to try something else with your 2stone, this is certainly a viable alternative.I had the stone at 650 and turned the heat on full blast for the 30 sec. bake.One thing I learned is that you have to rub flour into the tortilla or it will stick to the stone.

Nice!I tried JerryMac's dough recipe twice now (in my conventional oven) with great results, but your 2stone bake looks like it takes that pie to a whole new level! Nice job, and thanks for sharing some pics. Its good to know that recipe works for 2stone.

Thanks Mark, Amazing oven spring in that dough.Have you had a chance to try out the charcoal / gas yet?

Bambino,

No that is not what I am saying. Just turn down the heat and you can have any temperature you want. What I am saying is that if you try to make something intoa "jack of all trades" it may not be as good as if it sticks to what it does best, which ispizza or flat breads at high temperatures with intense radiant / convection heat.

Much the same as this forum. If this forum were to take on all baking subjects it would no longer be what it is now, which is one of the most informative forums on pizza related issues.As it stands now, there are several flat breads: Pizza, Pita, Naan, Lefse, and Tostada's to name a few, that benefit from a specialized high heat oven geared specifically for that type of baking.

I like the idea of the 2Stone staying as a true-blue pizza oven. It stays 100% what it was created forand isn't diluted.

Now.... another thought that came to mind, is to create a an authentic "bread oven".

Introducing the 2Stone Bread Oven. - this product is higher in height, perhaps more insulated, closed in areas wherethe pizza oven is not, and is not intended for pizza. It's a bread only product.

Just like Mcdonalds does, by adding cheese to a burger, and now had created 2 different products, you could probablyhave a lot of success with a 100% tried and true *bread oven *, and promote it as that. Many of the purists on thesebread groups could be looking for that "perfect solution" to baking bread outdoors.

There are many many many bread forums out on the net, and they love bread making, and most of them don't even make pizzaso there is indeed a big market for this type of bread oven.

Logged

Pizzamaker, Rib Smoker, HomeBrewer, there's not enough time for a real job.

You make a good point. They are really two different animals.Also it seems to me that you would want to bake more loavesat one time. How many loaves do you bake at a time when youdo bread? and out of curiosity what is your standard temperatureand how long does it take to bake your bread. And you never know..... maybe being able to do both would be an option.It would add to the cost and no one likes to spend any more than they have to.So....... Canadianbacon, Kasmir and Bambino it's all "brainstorming"

I am curious how or if the upper stone gets hotter than the bottom? I was under the impression that the top needs to be hotter than the bottom to cook both the top and bottom evenly since the bottom is touching the stone and of course the top is not.

I was thinking about just throwing together a sort of 4 or 5 sided rectangle of fire bricks within my grill and was wondering if it would work before I waste time and fuel. I know it is not ideal but we had some kitchen work started earlier than anticipated. I know it would probably take hours to heat up at 2" thick.

We use a steel plate with an air space between the stone and the plate on the bottom and a thinner stone with an aluminum heat conductor on the top to bring both stones to temp at the same time. You could use thicker material, it means you will have to heat up the increased thermal mass considerably longer to reach the high temps you are looking for. It is nice to have the top as hot as possible, but if you are willing to bake in the 650F range you can expect better results than if you are shooting for 800+. It's in that temp. range that everything becomes a lot more critical and difficult to manage.

I'll usually do at least 2 loaves at a time, I should do 4, but I love baking too much, and like torepeat the process more often, just because I find it very soothing to bake. Just like many guys in mybeer club that like to make 20 gallons of beer at a time, I like doing 5, just because I love to do it more often,and it's a great way to just relax and learn more about the process.

I usually bake at 375 degrees F for about 40-50 minutes, but, many times i'll up that temp to 425 for the first 15 mins or sojust so I get some really good oven-spring on the bread.